I write this piece to request folks to challenge the preconceived notion that technology is the answer to everything. Technology in most cases, can make life easier,
but the solution to every problem isn't always a web app, an online portal or a digital kiosk. Technology should instead be seen as a conduit - a channel to get your product or service in the hands of the customer faster.
I had the opportunity to work with a fantastic team of UX designers, solution architects and program managers at ICF Next as part of the Customer Experience - Center of Excellence team at USDA, wherein we were looking at the farm loan application process.
The users were farm loan officers (FLOs) and producers (farmers). The goal was to identify roadblocks, inhibitors, pain points and moments of delight in the application process and apply this information to make the end-to-end farm loan application process, a smooth and hassle-free experience for everyone involved.
Design projects can be process or product-based based on your user and business needs, which determines which side of UX you're functioning on - product or service design. Here, when we set out to improve the aforementioned farm loan experience, there was never a product in sight, but we rather focused bringing positive changes to the process a.k.a Service Design. The result would be a proposal to stakeholders that would've included changes in workflow management, the customer journey, revamp of current systems or introduction of new ones and changes in government policy. The impact we would have as designers to shape the entire experience was tremendous, which made this endeavour challenging and of course, rewarding.
Ben (Principal UX Researcher) and I interviewed 5 USDA stakeholders and 3 FLOs to understand the application process better. We started with a broad set of questions about the steps involved in the journey of applying for a USDA farm loan, paperwork required, loan programs available for producers at different stages of their profession, processing timelines involved and tools used to process these loans. Every new discovery was added as a question for the next interview to confirm our finding. The journey map below accurately portrays both the technical and emotional journey a typical producer goes through while filing for a farm loan.
We conducted two(2) discovery workshops with major stakeholders to validate our findings from the interviews. We found that the every service center (place where FLOs work and help producers apply for loans) is different for the type of loans processed, type of producers in the area, crop diversity and service center (SC) density. These variables dictate:
The findings from this workshop set the stage for our field visits and helped in:
The insights gained from the interviews and workshops helped shape our personas. We catergorized producers based on age, experience in the field of agriculture, region (and related data points like the crop diversity, weather etc.), needs and goals.
The field visits were critical in helping us understand the motivation behind applying for a farm loan, evaluating the emotional journey a typical customer goes through, the work dynamics in the service centers,
the drivers for preferring / not preferring to use technology, understanding the existing software used to service applications and how the quality of service varied based
on the variables mentioned previously, under "The Discovery Workshops".
The structure for these field visits was as follows:
Day 1: Introduce ourselves to FLO staff, perform a contextual inquiry and follow it up with staff interviews
Day 2: Meet producers, conduct interviews and dot voting exercises (with ideas discussed in the workshops) to understand their immediate and future needs.
Day 3: Team retrospective with FLO staff to share producers' feedback and gauge level of effort involved to have ideas implemented.
The contextual inquiry session involved observing what a typical day in the life of a FLO looks like
and how they go about processing loan applications. This followed a QnA type of interview. The day ended with a hybrid card sorting exercise (shown in picture) where they were asked to pick
ideas that seemed necessary and sort them in order of priority.
The producers stories are captured below. Each one is unique - every producer's approach towards the loan process and even farming at large, is
influenced by their background, beliefs (religious, business, agrarian) and experiences.
A synthesis workshop was held to share findings from the discovery workshops and field visits. In this, we honed in on our findings from the various field visits we'd done in past weeks to identify recurring patterns in our studies that would help deem our findings as conclusive and work towards a proposal.
This was the most glaring theme in our interviews with the producers.
The producers enjoyed having cordial interactions with the FLOs, even if that meant dropping by the Farm Loan Offices (FLOs) to speak with the staff. This happened in most cases because the FLO staff were either producers themselves or had
immense knowledge of farming and related disciplines.
Producers admitted they didn't wholly trust technology and would rather prefer their questions being answered by an erring yet empathetic human than a seemingly fault-resistent machine.
Also, due to limited network access, they couldn't always consume online information.
We saw a similar pattern for the FLOs as well.
Good quote (FLOs): "If their(producer) loan is approved, I want to be the first person to give them the good news.
If it's rejected, I'd want to sit them down, tell them why and give them options to get it reviewed.
An automated electronic response would only add fuel to the fire and compel them to appeal the decision in court."
We visited 5 FLOs and found that all staff members in each office were like one close family, which allowed them to function as one cohesive unit, sharing workloads and distributing backlogs, thus helping things move faster. We heard this isn't the case at other FLOs and that few FLOs are more siloed than most making them slower in processing applications. It is important to note, however, that we didn't come across any such FLO and if at all this problem exists, it might've introduced a slight bias in our findings.
The systems FLOs used to process applications were disconnected. Every system services a certain step in the farm loan application process (FLAP). Also, each system is not intuitive enough to "talk" to other systems which creates an additional burden of migrating data across various systems for every new application. If these systems could communicate, information could be dispersed and synced across all systems, forms could be pre-populated with data and paperwork could be saved in an e-repository reducing workload. The need of a holistically integrated system that served all stages - awareness, application, processing and maintenance of the FLAP, was also surfaced by the office staff.
Another huge pain point that hampers the efficiency of many FLO staff is the amount of paperwork involved. Although there are e-systems that capture information, everything does need to be regenerated on paper - That's policy. Over time, as the loan matures, the paperwork piles up. Every loan application is one ginormous folder with a stack of > 50 forms. We also found that these forms aren't consolidated and in many cases, require repetitive information. This not only makes managing the applications cumbersome, but also adds to the producer's frustration as they have to fill repetitive information.
Compliance policies for the application process are communicated to the FLO staff through 'handbooks'. Every loan program has a different handbook. Changes in policies lead to modifications in the handbook. And for most loan programs, handbooks are not updated as soon as policy changes. FLOs are informed much later by word of mouth or emails. Changes in policy amount to fresh/additional paperwork. So now, the FLO staff has to ask producers to send the new, necessary documentation, further delaying the application process.
The performance of FLOs hinges of how experienced the staff are in the field of agriculture and with processing loans. More experienced FLOs positively impact the experience and are pivotal in helping producers smoothly transition through various stages of the process - something new, less experienced or temporary FLOs are rarely able to do. Sensitive conversations around loan rejection, delinquency and liquidation are handled better by experienced staff.
While there is adequate outreach and awareness material available on farm loans, most producers hear about them through word of mouth.
Brochures with information on loan programs are mostly available at USDA's farm loan offices (FLOs).
But not all producers are aware of these offices.
Information is available online, but most producers do not use computers or smartphones.